BackgroundHealth literacy is widely considered as a key determinant of health and a priority in the public health policy agenda. Low health literacy has been associated with poorer health states, broader inequalities and higher health systems’ costs. In the present study we bring into focus the functional health literacy among university students in Greece, researching and assessing mainly their ability to apply basic knowledge in a health context.MethodsThe study was carried out during the period 15–30 April 2013, among a random sample of 1,526 students of 14 Higher Tertiary Public universities and Technological Educational Institutes in Greece. The objective of the study was to assess the functional health literacy among university students in Greece, adopting the short four-item comprehension test of Bostock and Steptoe. Summary statistics, correlations and regressions were used to assess the determinants of health literacy and the association with self-perceived health, health behaviours and health risks.ResultsEconomic factors, such as family income, demographic factors, such as gender, and health behaviours and risks, namely consumption of alcohol, smoking and physical workout are associated with the level of health literacy and health status of the participant. While the results of the study are consistent with previous work in this area, several findings worth further research.ConclusionsThough, health promotion interventions in Greece include health literacy as one of the basic pillars of the public health policy agenda, it is clear, that health literacy needs to become a key policy issue in Greece, mainly focusing in young ages, where healthy (or unhealthy) behaviours are established affecting the health through the life span.

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This paper studies the diffusion of knowledge and its consequences for local innovation production. In a common framework, we analyze the geographic reach of different channels of knowledge flows that thus far have been studied separately in the literature. To jointly estimate these flows, we develop and apply novel econometric techniques appropriate to the nature of the data. We find that geographic along with technological proximity to be more essential to the operation of market than to non-market channels of knowledge flows. External accessible disembodied knowledge has a strong positive effect on local innovation production as large as that of homegrown knowledge.

This paper studies the relative geographic scope of two different channels of knowledge flows, a market channel where knowledge diffuses via patent transactions and a non-market channel where knowledge spillovers operate via patent citations. While there is significant work on informal non-market channels of knowledge diffusion, formal market channels of knowledge transfer are less studied, primarily due to the lack of comprehensive data. Using a newly compiled dataset by the Office of the Chief Economist at the United States Patent and Trademark Office of transactions of US issued patents, we are able to provide novel insights on the spread of patent transaction flows across the states of the US. Our findings support that geographic proximity, in terms of distance and border, matters for the spread of knowledge for both channels; however, it is more essential to the operation of market based (patent trades) than to the operation of non-market based (citations) flows. Although both flows are highly localized, the geographic scope of knowledge flows based on citations is larger than that of traded patents. Intra-sectoral flows are also found to be very localized with Mechanical sector to exhibit the most geographically confined knowledge flows, while flows from information technology sectors, i.e., Electronics and Computers, are the most far reached compared to the knowledge flows from the rest of the sectors, both in the US and abroad. Finally, there is no nuance evidence that the importance of distance has declined over time, either at state or national level for both types of flows.